22 Strange Medical Instruments From the Past

In the history of medicine, machines became crucial parts of the diagnostic and treatment process in the first half of the 20th century. Scientists and doctors experimented with some really strange devices, and they developed a lot of creepy-looking health equipment—at least some of which seems almost horrific, seen through the eyes of today. The following 22 instruments are partly scary, partly weird, and partly awesome—just as inventions should be.

Pre-PET headgear (Positron Emission Tomography), built by the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Instrumentation Division to study the working brain.

Circa 1900: A woman inside an Electric Bath at the Light Care Institute.

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The first electrocardiograph, introduced by Cambridge Scientific Instruments.

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1919: A woman wearing a flu mask during the flu epidemic after the first world war.

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Children around a radiating glow of ultraviolet light at the Institute of Ray Therapy.

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Measuring the brainwaves, 1940.

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1955: A portable respirator, or iron lung, designed to enable patients to recuperate at home.

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1960: Dr G. H. Byford stands under an optokinetic drum wearing a contact lens with a miniature lamp cemented to the lens, during an experiment to investigate the reflex movements of the eyes and their association with visual illusions, at the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine in Farnborough.

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1960: A wire suit designed to measure body temperatures while researching the physiological effects of high speed and space travel.

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1955: A rotating cobalt machine swinging around the body of a patient, attacking cancerous tumours.

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A physician adjusts the beam path of the 2,000,000-volt Deep Therapy X-Ray Machine used to treat cancer at the Francis Delafield Hospital in New York City.

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Cobalt "bomb" treatment of a patient at a Paris clinic.

Image: Népszerű Technika, 1959 április

A therapy unit installed at the Oak Ridge hospital in 1955 used a source of radioactive cesium-137 to kill diseased tissue, allowing maximum dose of radiation to the cancerous area and minimising effects to healthy tissue elsewhere.